A DIFFICULT END TO THE MONTH

Portland
After the disappointment of Salt Lake City the previous weekend, Romain Dumas was more than impatient for the next race, at Portland in Oregon. After a very chaotic and momentous race in terms of the championship, the driver from Alès was looking forward to using the 6th round of the American Le Mans Series to regain some ground on their opposition. As winner in the GT2 category for the past two years at the small Portland track, Romain was full of enthusiasm during the two free practice sessions, setting second fastest time overall. "We've got a very-well balanced car and this should give us a great chance of a good result in the race itself. But in addition to the Audis, which of course are always very competitive, we've also got to deal with the two Team Dyson LM P1 entries, which have been given a 60kg weight reduction for this event", explained Romain after qualifying, in which he ended up in fourth spot on the grid, setting his third consecutive pole in LM P2 in three qualifying sessions since the start of the season in the process. As well as this 100% record, Dumas, from the Gard province in the south of France, also set another circuit lap record.

On Saturday afternoon, the Team Penske driver was more than proud when he lined up his Porsche Spyder RS between the two Audi R10's on the grid. At the first corner, where the track forms a bottleneck, first lap accidents are not unknown and true to form, this is exactly what happened. Romain tried to avoid the mélée but in doing so, he had to drive very forcefully over a kerb and in rejoining the track, he unintentionally hit very hard the rear end of Capello's Audi. In the other Porsche, Sascha Maassen tried to take advantage of all this and to overtake, but didn't quite manage it. At the end of the first lap, Romain was in the lead of the LM P2 class, in fifth place overall, behind the two Dysons and the two Audis. Romain shadowed the four leaders for the duration of his stint, just until they started to lap the back- markers, which was, in a sense, to seal the fate of his race. Stuck behind the Lola EX257 driven by Chris McMurray, Romain was losing precious time. The Lola, with its slightly more powerful engine and driven by a gentleman-driver, proved difficult to overtake. "I was signalling to the officials on every lap but maybe they didn't understand that an LM P2 car was trying to lap an LMP1 entry. I lost a lot of valuable time behind McMurray who evidently didn't realise what the blue flags being waved at him at each corner mean. Duncan Dayton was gaining on me too and suddenly, just as I was braking into the first chicane, I glimpsed a yellow car alongside me, right at the moment that I started to turn into the corner. So I steered away but unfortunately got on the dirty part of the track on the outside of the turn; we tou- ched and the Lola spun round. Just as I was going by it, Duncan came back into me and smashed into the side of my car. We lost 20 minutes in the pits changing the radiator and the exhaust. No matter how quickly the team could have worked, we obviously then had no chance of winning the class". With team-mate Timo Bernhard at the wheel, the Porsche Spyder RS No. 7 eventually crossed the finishing line in third place in the LM P2 category, earning them 13 valuable points more in the championship. But even a fourth consecutive podium finish could not console Romain and Timo, now 34 points behind the class leaders, Clint Field and Liz Halliday, and 29 points behind their Penske stable-mates, Lucas Luhr and Sascha Maassen, with four races remaining in the season.
Before the next round of the ALMS at Road America on 18 August, Romain heads back to Europe to drive the Ebimotors Porsche 996 GT3-RSR with Emmanuel Collard and Luca Riccitelli in the Spa 24 Hours race.

Romain DUMAS